Jeff Rowland

Classic movie scenes and more specifically the juxtapositioning of inclement weather at the exact point key relationships depicted in a film are beginning or ended. This, more typical than we care to imagine series of events is the inspiration and driving force behind artist, Jeff Rowland’s most celebrated pieces, and a naturally occurring dynamic that continues to provide a depth of influence in his compositions. To underline this thought, Rowland quotes scenes in a number of classic movies, whereby the lead character’s relationships are fraught or about to hit the buffers at precisely the same time storm clouds gather overhead. Or during the middle of what appears to be a tropical downpour. It’s a theme and powerfully emotive backdrop that a number of directors have successfully used down the year on celluloid to add even more tempestuous and suspense to an already heart-breaking or tear-jerking scene/end game.

As Rowland is native to the North East of England, a place known for its often hostile weather conditions and propensity for regular precipitation, he never finds the perfect scene setting difficult to come by. In fact, more often than not, he’s spoilt for choice. Add into this artistic compositional melting pot the flagging up of ambiguous street signs and the emergence of street corners, and all stylistic pointers lead to the parting of the company of the two main protagonists found in most of Rowland’s primarily romance-fuelled studies. Or perhaps, the initial coming together of the leads? The decision as to which and whom is very much left to the minds of those looking into the artwork and is never blatantly expressed in visual terms.

So if that’s what Rowland is known for, creatively-speaking to date, where, when and how did it all begin? We have to rewind to the 1970s, when growing up in Northumberland he recalls his Grandmother using her paint by numbers set of oils, which fascinated him as an impressionable youngster. After experimenting with a range of oil paints himself over the intervening, adolescent years, Rowland admits he was always lured back to them time after time, despite exploring a range of alternative materials along the way. Rowland went on to study art at North Tyneside College, and on leaving in 1984 set himself up as a self-employed professional artist, undertaking compositional work in a wide variety of mediums and interpreting diverse subject matters.

It was, sadly, Rowland’s indecision on which genre to effectively specialise in and master, coupled with an unforeseen economic downturn gripping his native North East at the time, which saw work dry up, and ultimately forced him to look at contingency plans as such to compensate for the insecurity. Seizing the initiative, Rowland came to the decision to return to higher education as a mature student with a view to gaining a greater knowledge and understanding of a particular genre, and focussing on that thereafter to kick-start his flagging creative career. Enrolling on a HND Advertising and Illustration course, it was during the second year of the B/TEC that Rowland opted to concentrate on Visualizing as a discipline whilst attending Newcastle School of Art and Design. Whilst there he worked on many live briefs and was successful in winning a NEPA award (North East Print Association).

On graduation, Rowland put into practice a steely determination to make things work this second time around, and turned to local galleries who he hoped might show an interest in displaying and promoting his new artistic direction. This proved to be inspired thinking, as shortly after exhibiting at a Northumberland gallery, Rowland was invited to showcase his new compositions at the London Affordable; where his stock sold out in but its first day. From there, Rowland’s fortunes changed rapidly, as successive exhibitions in Edinburgh and Dublin brought him to prominence in the contemporary art world, while making a living from his art looking more promising than at any time previously.

Speaking recently, Rowland has identified that his work has evolved more and that he’s honed his efforts and attributes into compositions which he describes as really expressing and conveying a certain atmosphere or moment. He goes to pains to explain that he must, as an artist, feel and to a certain degree, live every moment that he captures on his canvasses, and agrees with Billy Connelly’s famous outpouring, when he was quoted as saying that he hated songs about Scotland that were written by men in London: men who had never even seen the Highlands. In other words, if you are going to do something creative, get to the very heart of it first. Something that Rowland took quite literally when he once boarded and spent time with a North Sea trawler crew out on a lengthy haul, sketching them as they went about their daily, so as he could do visual justice to the series of paintings he later went on to commit to canvas.